‘Inflamed’: New book by local authors details evacuation of Santa Rosa care home during Tubbs Fire, and the fallout that followed

It was as if the characters had sprung from the pages of a book to work the crowd.

Thursday evening at Barrel Proof Lounge in downtown Santa Rosa, in a back space normally devoted to stand-up comedy, local authors Anne Belden and Paul Gullixson introduced some of the key figures of “Inflamed: Abandonment, Heroism, and Outrage in Wine Country’s Deadliest Firestorm,” the book they were there to launch.

There were Kathy and Mark Allen, the unassuming couple that helped evacuate dozens of vulnerable seniors, many of them non-ambulatory, from the elder care facility Villa Capri in the harrowing early-morning hours of the Tubbs Fire in October 2017. There was R.J. Kisling, a Petaluma welder who discovered another large group of stunned seniors waiting for rescue in the darkness of Varenna, the retirement and assisted living facility just up the hill from Villa Capri.

And sitting up front in the audience was Susie Pritchett, 95, who was living at Villa Capri when the Tubbs Fire sparked just outside Calistoga and, propelled by ungodly winds, swept to the hills of Fountaingrove in a matter of hours.

Asked what she recalled of that night, Pritchett said, “The camaraderie. Everyone was trying to help. It was wonderful.”

That’s a central theme of “Inflamed,” a 442-page tribute to the quiet heroism of a handful of relatives, staff members and first responders who helped prevent Tubbs, which killed 22 people and displaced thousands, from being a much greater tragedy.

But while the ticktock of those gripping evacuations make up the core of the book, Belden and Gullixson explore other themes, too. They devote one section of their account to the history of Fountaingrove, setting the context for the mayhem of Oct. 8-9, 2017. And they close it with a section detailing what came after — especially the government investigations and lawsuits that dogged Oakmont Senior Living, the company that owned both Villa Capri and Varenna.

All of that has been written about extensively, including in the pages of The Press Democrat. But Belden and Gullixson provide details never before published, including excerpts of depositions from Budow v. Oakmont Senior Living, a case filed in Sonoma County Superior Court in January 2018.

Belden and Gullixson gained access to those depositions through a source. Shortly after, they said, a judge sealed the records.

Thursday’s book release was a chance for the two Sonoma County residents to finally exhale after completing a project that had consumed them for several years.

They signed copies of “Inflamed” as people drank beers at Barrel Proof, then moved to the overflowing back room for a presentation that included retired Press Democrat columnist Gaye LeBaron; firefighter Tony Riedell; former Varenna worker Andre Blakely; and Beth Eurotas-Steffy and Dawn Ross, both of whom had parents evacuated from Villa Capri in 2017.

Audience members included Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Chair Chris Coursey, District Attorney Carla Rodriguez and Sonoma State University political science professor David McCuan.

Belden could not have envisioned such a gala evening as the Tubbs Fire unfolded. A journalism professor at Santa Rosa Junior College and faculty adviser for the Oak Leaf, the school’s newspaper, she gathered a team of eight students as the flames swept into Santa Rosa and began reporting on the devastation.

One of those students, Roberta MacIntyre, wound up chronicling the disaster in a documentary film and asked Belden to consult. In August 2018, they interviewed Melissa Langhals, an electrician whose mother, Virginia Gunn, was a Villa Capri resident.

As the interview wrapped up, Langhals showed them the account posted on the Oakmont Senior Living website — the version of the story claiming the last Villa Capri seniors were evacuated through “a team effort, led by staff with help from family members.”

“Yeah, that’s bull----,” Langhals told them through tears. “It was me and Kathy (Allen).”

“That’s when I realized there was more to this story,” Belden told The Press Democrat this week.

To discover more, she enlisted an old acquaintance: Gullixson, a former Press Democrat editorial director who is now communications manager for Sonoma County. They had worked together within the Peninsula Times Tribune (Palo Alto) newspaper chain in the early 1990s.

Belden and Gullixson figured their work might lead to a couple newspaper or magazine stories. More than five years later — after conducting over 100 interviews and poring through thousands of pages of documents, after evacuating their homes during subsequent wildfires and each mourning the loss of a parent — they have a book to hold in their hands.

“There were some days it was really hard,” Gullixson said. “Because it is emotionally challenging to crawl into this story every weekend day.”

In 2021, they brought in Lauren Spates as a contributing editor/writer. Spates, the co-authors say, helped condense the sprawling account into a manageable length, and occasionally served as referee when Gullixson and Belden disagreed on a point.

One on-the-record interview they were unable to land was with Oakmont Senior Living owner Bill Gallaher or his top executives. In December 2021, Belden sat down for two hours with Komron Shahhosseini, the company’s director of site acquisition and development, and Brandon Cho, a site acquisition specialist. They ultimately informed her that neither the corporation nor its employees would participate.

The authors would like “Inflamed” to help dispel a couple of misconceptions about what happened during the Tubbs Fire. One is that while elders were being hurriedly removed from the chaos of Villa Capri, everything proceeded smoothly at Varenna.

“Varenna was a s---show,” Belden argued.

Another false narrative, according to the authors, is that all the employees of both facilities disappeared into the night Oct. 8, 2017. In fact, some left with residents packed into their vehicles, and a few stuck around to help even as vineyards caught fire around them.

“There was no abandonment on their part,” Belden said. “But they were abandoned by management.”

Mostly, the two longtime journalists are hoping “Inflamed” wakes people up to the risks that many senior citizens still face. When the Camp Fire laid waste to the town of Paradise in 2018, they noted, 75% of the victims were 65 or older. In Maui this year, as far as is known from the still-incomplete casualty list, it’s more than 60%.

Other long-term care sites might be just as vulnerable as Villa Capri. The authentic desires of relatives to find beautiful settings for their parents’ and grandparents’ final years means a lot of care homes are in scenic places that are vulnerable to fires, floods and power outages.

That message resonates with Beth Eurotas-Steffy, whose mother is now 90 and lives in a skilled nursing facility in Petaluma. Eurotas-Steffy worked closely with Belden and Gullixson and remains committed to spreading the story of what occurred six years ago, and why it still matters.

“When our parents are older and in need of care, if they move into an assisted living facility, they believe they will enjoy life and be safe,” she told The Press Democrat. “And it’s a big lie. That didn’t happen at Villa Capri. We have to be smarter and ask better questions.

“And, since we can’t rely on the integrity of the owners of these facilities to put safety over profits, we need enhanced legislation to force them to.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.